#quel'thalas

Illiaryn and Maia. 🍂

Commission for @kyuusei-shadowleaf. ♥︎

"STARS ALIGN" (2025)

I posted this in the WoW Forums and I expect it to get lambasted by Alliance mains so I'm posting it here as well.

This doesn’t surprise me since the writers don’t really seem interested in the undead cast beyond the lightmongers like Alonsus and Calia, but the lack of a Darkfallen presence in Midnight has been rather disappointing. This is the Quel’thalas expansion. All Thalassians should be represented.

Like on a logistical level, it makes no sense that there aren’t Darkfallen present. The Scourge wiped out 90% of the High Elven populace when it attacked. If even less than half of those casualties were then risen into undeath, that would still mean the Darkfallen would outnumber the Blood Elves, High Elves and Void Elves COMBINED.

And from a storytelling perspective, it also feels like a missed opportunity. The Darkfallen are clearly a group of people that the Blood Elves don’t want to think about. Sure they’re closer to the Forsaken than most other Horde races, but they have expressed discomfort about the idea of their own undead. You see that in the way they practically revere Sylvanas and the other Farstriders who gave their lives to defend Silvermoon, while doing everything in their power not to address the fact that all of those Rangers were still walking around 20 years after the fact decidedly not being conveniently good little martyrs. It’s hard for them to keep up this idea of a golden society reclaiming it’s former glory and not debasing themselves with dark magics when the ghosts of their kin still walk the earth and outnumber them.

You can do SO much with that as a framing. Have the Darkfallen rush to defend their former homeland only to be reminded that their presence is divisive. Let Tranquilien and Windrunner Village be a sort of save haven for them where Blood Elves who ARE sympathetic collaborate with them. Have some Darkfallen question why they are even bothering defending a people who barely tolerate them and protecting a font of magic that would burn them to a crisp just for getting too close. It would be a deliciously messy, deliberately uncomfortable story beat and it would give characters like Velonara something to actually do.

Instead, the role of dark outcast seems to have been given solely to the Void Elves, who are perhaps the most minute Thalassian sect. And while we see Forsaken and Darkfallen npcs in Tranquillien, attention is never drawn to it.